The End Of The World

This was the episode that most of us had waited for, Rose was basically an introduction and was fast, pacey, funny and over too quickly and though the ratings were fabulous, everything depends on what happens with this episode, was it 10million of curious viewers or are they all going to tune in again?

Christopher's leaving stories apart from being vital to the Doctor Who world are also, cynically, fantastic press stories, promotion, whatever you'd like to call them and so more than a few people are going to watch to see what all the fuss is about too, despite Ant and Decs schedules having been moved forward. Tomorrow's rating figures are going to be very interesting.

I've read a lot of very positive postings and where they are negative they are very negative at that.

I'm prepared to give the show a chance, I wanted to see this new Doctor in an episode that was complete, and this was it.

Right from the start, the CGI was first class, special effects the production teams would have only dreamt of twenty years ago...and make up and design that was a feast for the eye.

I'm not too sure what to make of the spin wheel device on the Tardis console, or the Doctor pumping away, to start the engines. Very dubious about that one....it may grow on me, certainly the Tardis seems to be very different to anything that's gone before and very organic in look and texture so I'll keep an open mind on that one. I've watched Who all my life, certainly my earliest memories are from Power of The Daleks, and so I have a wealth of memories, which include fantastic to disgraceful and banal.

The story started well, the body language between The Doctor and Rose is fabulous, and every now and again, she reminds us of how human she is, and how alien the Doctor is, he has acquired an innocent arrogance and dismisses her protests when she discovers the Tardis has given her this gift of language. Tom is probably the only other Doctor that could have gotten away with that.

The Aliens were first class, Jade being a very interesting character and one I was sorry that died, as the possibilities were interesting of where that relationship could have gone. the scene between them, when she admits she has scanned him and discovered his identity was interesting, and the Doctors tears were quite touching, obviously another story to come....maybe a future story may have them meet again at an earlier time period, who knows?

Cassandra was exactly what we expected, first class voice over and top notch bitchiness, lots of little in jokes, and sexual innuendos, which some people haven't liked, but doesn't bother me one jot. It may seem that I simply praise everything about it, but I do have some reservations, I am not at all happy with these 50 minute episodes, it's too short. Certainly in the past we all remember stories that were 6 episodes and should have been 4, but 50 minutes is far too short to fit so much into.

The writer has built up the suspense wonderfully, lots of in-jokes and entertaining asides, and suddenly, there's 5 minutes left and everything has to happen in those 5 minutes. I'm aware there are a couple of two parters due and these may well work much better in this respect. Doctor Who's strengths have been drama, characterizations and situations and these take time to develop and though we have excellent people working on this series, I do think this 50 minute format is going to ultimately be too restrictive for them.

I dread the thought of it becoming like Blakes7, colorful, camp, mindless running about in badly written stories, which it did become.

On the whole though, fabulous stuff, I'll stay watching. I'm a middle aged guy that's as excited each Saturday night as I was 35 years ago, which bemuses my children and probably embarrass the hell out of them. Excellent.